Video: Esmé Patterson – What Do You Call a Woman?

Recently, I’ve been having quite a few conversations with people about music videos. I can’t really say any of these conversations have been positive or in favor of the almost forgotten art of music videos. Most videos that are spit out, seem forced and rather uninspiring. In fact, I don’t think it really plays a huge role into how the consumer gets introduced to music at all anymore. However, there still are great music videos out there. You just might have to do a little digging to find them.

That brings me to this new video from Esmé Patterson.

I was introduced to Miss Patterson through some song features with Shakey Graves. I was even more impressed with her solo work and her concept album, Woman to Woman. Basically, she took well known songs about women that have been written by men, and instead, flipped that around and each song that she wrote, is the viewpoint of these said female characters. So for instance, this song that I’m showing you the video for, is a song about Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”. Interesting, right? I thought that was such a neat way to go about making music.

The video here explores the themes of this song in a very fascinating way. Director, Rodrigo Melgarejo did a wonderful job. Visually, the video is stunning, but it also makes you think a little bit. It kind of makes you go… “Oh…wow”, when certain scenes are displayed. But this is what music videos should be doing. They should make you have a reaction, they should be able to tell a story.

So without further ado, here is the video for, “What Do You Call a Woman?”

*Side note: The video was actually shot at the Kit Kat Club the same time I was visiting Portland, oddly enough. Any hopes of myself casually running into Esmé did not happen though.